NASA Lands Rover on Mars

By: Cole McKowen 2/25/21

Photo Courtesy: NASA

It was a monumental day for NASA and the future of space exploration. NASA’s Mars rover, perseverance, landed on the red planet this past Thursday after more than 6 months of travel , covering almost 300 million miles.

The rover sent its first images directly after landing, writing on its official Twitter account, “Hello, world. My first look at my forever home.”

This Mars rover mission called Mars 2020 was an official part of the NASA Mars exploration program , which started back in July 30th, 2020 at its launch.

This rover lived up to its name as the NASA team had to persevere and spend the final phases of this mission in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.

NASA Administrator Steve Jurczyk said, “Perseverance is just getting started, and already has provided some of the most iconic visuals in space exploration history. It reinforces the remarkable level of engineering and precision that is required to build and fly a vehicle to the Red Planet.”

The rover survived the difficult 7 mile plummet to the surface before landing on a crater. Now, the rover's mission is to search for signs of ancient life on the planet while also taking samples and studying the climate.

Ultimately, the successful mission was a relief to NASA and exciting look ahead to the future of exploration on Mars. But for now we’ll just have to eagerly wait for any news about signs of life and what space travel may look like.